December 24, 2020
Born out of French racing driver Olivier Lombard’s imagination, Hopium is on its way to build the world’s first high-performance luxury sedan powered by hydrogen. Boasting more than 500 hp and 1 000 km of range, the Hopium Mãchina prototype should be unveiled in June 2021 and enter production five years later. The French racing […]
December 24, 2020
The American e-truck start-up, Nikola, is further sliding down the slope after announcing that the mega-deal for 2 500 battery-electric garbage trucks was abandoned. Nikola would develop these refuse trucks based on the electric Tre for Republic Services, one of America’s biggest waste collection companies, with an option of up to 5 000 units later. […]
December 21, 2020
Toyota Motor Europe (TME) is strengthening its alliance with Portuguese bus builder CaetanoBus in the development, production, and sales of fuel cell-driven city buses. It’s now becoming a shareholder through its existing joint venture Toyota Caetano Portugal (TCAP). TME is stepping into another Portuguese company, too, Finlog. The latter, today a passenger car financial service […]
December 16, 2020
Truck manufacturers Daimler Truck, Volvo Group, and Iveco are teaming up with oil and gas companies Royal Dutch Shell and Austrian OMV to accelerate the rollout of hydrogen trucks in Europe. The ‘common-interest alliance’ is baptized H2Accelerate (H2A). It wants to put hundreds of fuel cell trucks on the road and set up 20 high-capacity […]
December 15, 2020
CEOs of all European truck manufacturers have agreed – under the umbrella of EU car federation ACEA – to have all new trucks sold by 2040 to run fossil-free. They acknowledge that it is the only way to attain the EU’s goal to be carbon-neutral by 2050. It implies making renewable energy cheaper than diesel […]
December 10, 2020
The European Commission has presented its plan for a ‘smart, green, and affordable transport’ of the future on Wednesday. The ‘‘Sustainable and Smart Mobility Strategy’ is an 82-points plan focusing on ten key areas called ‘flagships’ with targets set for 2030, 2035, and 2050. It confirms the 30 million zero-emission vehicles by 2030, three million […]
December 09, 2020
On Tuesday, German car manufacturing group Daimler announced to sell its Smart production plant in Hambach (north-east of France) to Ineos Automotive, part of the British chemical company Ineos. All staff should be transferred to the new owner, and production of the Grenadier off-roader should start in 2022 alongside the electric two-seater Smart EQ Fortwo […]
December 03, 2020
‘Limburg Hydrogen Society’ a consortium of companies and institutions active in the Belgian province, has the ambition to produce green hydrogen locally and have a filling station operational in Genk by 2023. The goal for participating partners like logistics company H.Essers, Ikea, Lidl, or inter-municipal waste treatment company Limburg.net, among others, is to have their […]
December 01, 2020
American carmaker General Motors is withdrawing from its deal with electric truck start-up Nikola to become a shareholder and co-develop and build the latter’s Badger pickup. As that project was only viable with an established carmaker’s help, Nikola decided to ditch the Badger, for the time being, and refund people that preordered it. GM will […]
December 01, 2020
The second generation of Toyota’s hydrogen car Mirai is very different from its predecessor. As a consequence, the number one Japanese car manufacturer has much higher ambitions for Mirai II. It wants to sell at least ten times more Mirai II models and prepare the field for real hydrogen-based mobility. One of the principal aims […]
November 30, 2020
Flanders has dedicated €125 million of its post-corona €4,3 billion ‘Resilion-plan’ for research and innovation in the field of hydrogen as a green alternative energy. ‘Only’ 125 million, as compared to €9 billion Germany is betting on hydrogen and France’s €7 billion. In the Flemish ‘Hydrogen Vision’ plan, the current government says to see few […]
November 27, 2020
On Thursday, French train manufacturer Alstom announced having signed a contract with the regional Italian rail operator, Ferrovie Nord Milano (FNM), to deliver six hydrogen trains. The manufacturer has converted its Coradia regional train platform to fuel cell technology to become a viable alternative for diesel on non-electrified train lines. Alstom is steaming ahead in […]
November 25, 2020
On a three-day ‘European Conference on Batteries’ hosted this week online by the German EU presidency, it turns out already 500 companies have joined the alliance for ‘an Airbus of Batteries’. The European Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič is confident that “by 2025, the EU will be able to produce enough battery cells to meet the need […]
November 24, 2020
American engine multinational Cummins will set up a new factory in Herten in Germany’s Ruhr Area to assemble fuel cell systems used in the Alstom Coradia iLint hydrogen trains to start with. Yesterday it published a survey about the consumer attitude toward hydrogen-based traveling. Cummins, generally known as a diesel and gas engine expert for […]
November 20, 2020
Toyota indicates that the Mirai Mk2 will be launched on the Japanese market and in the United States at the end of 2020. Whether and when this version will come to Europe could not be confirmed by the Belgian importer. Japanese market takes the lead After a career of six years, Toyota replaces its first […]
November 20, 2020
The city of Antwerp is going to deploy two ‘zero-emission’ garbage trucks on hydrogen as part of the European REVIVE project. Revive stands for ‘Refuse Vehicle Innovation and Validation in Europe’, a four-year project that started in 2018 to test 15 fuel cell refuse trucks in several cities in Europe and promote hydrogen as an […]
November 19, 2020
Today’s modern trucks can almost all drive on renewable ‘blue’ (HVO) diesel made from waste vegetable oils without modifying the diesel engine. When used purely (HVO100), instead of mixing with fossil diesel and made from the right feedstock, it can reduce CO2 emissions by 89%, fine particles by 30%, and NOx by 9%, the industry […]
October 30, 2020
French automotive supplier Plastic Omnium has courted German spare parts manufacturer ElringKlinger to jointly develop fuel cells. The fruit of that courtship – a newly setup joint-venture – is called EKPO, with 60% held by ElringKlinger and 40% by Plastic Omnium. The German familiy-owned group employing some 10 000 people is a supplier to almost […]
October 26, 2020
German-French carmaker Opel is going to equip its ‘lounge on wheels’, the Zafira Life, with a fuel cell (again). The technical details are not communicated yet. According to newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, the development has reached a stage road testing can start next year. In that interview with the newspaper, Opel’s boss, Michael Lohscheller, confirmed […]
October 22, 2020
In the harbor of Ghent, the North-C-Methanol project is to become the world’s first in CO2 capturing on such a large scale and use it to create in a sustainable way methanol for the chemical industry and as an alternative fuel. By 2024, some 46 000 tons of methanol should be produced using ‘green’ hydrogen […]
October 15, 2020
Shell has opened this week its first hydrogen refueling station (HRS) in its home country, along the A4 highway between The Hague and Amsterdam, near Hoofddorp. That brings the total number of public ‘private’ hydrogen stations in the Netherlands to five. But this should change rapidly as the government facilitates financing for twenty more. By […]
October 12, 2020
In Sweden, a housing corporation will soon finish 44 self-supporting apartments. Residents will we totally independent of the network for water, electricity, and heat. “We will show the world that all available ecologic methods can manage it all.” “We’ve searched for existing solutions,” explains Pär Löfstedt of architecture and design bureau Yellon. “Otherwise, it would […]
October 07, 2020
The French automotive supplier, Faurecia, has opened on Tuesday in Bavans, Doubs (France), its ‘world R&D center’ to develop hydrogen storage systems for cars and trucks. CEO Patrick Koller announced that the company would build a new factory to mass-produce these tanks in Etupes by 2023. The new center, an investment of €25 million, is […]
October 07, 2020
On this Wednesday, the seven first Hyundai XCIENT Fuel Cell trucks of a fleet of fifty have hit the road in Switzerland. The trucks are rented on a pay-per-use base, offering a flat fee per kilometer, including all expenses and the hydrogen needed for seven Swiss distribution companies, among which Coop and Migros. Hyundai is […]
